% Thank you hbomberguy for raising more than 250,000 USD for Mermaids UK!
% Leah Rowe
% 2019-01-21

Mermaids is a charity for trans children in the UK. It provides support to...
trans kids. It's a brilliant charity, and an absolute lifeline for trans kids.

So... TL;DR they got some money promised by the National Lottery but some
TERFs and other angry people wrote to them questioning it and then the lottery
put it under review... things looked bleak, until this happened:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WIM-GKRS9Vk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Related news article on Pink News](https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/01/19/mermaids-trans-donkey-kong-twitch/)

Read that article.
Yes, you're reading it correctly. Some random guy said fuck you to these pricks and decided to raise the money himself. He sat in his flat, in his underwear, playing Donkey Kong 64 for 50+ hours straight, to the exclusion of everything else, even sleep, in exchange for donations. He raised over a *quarter of a million dollars* to give to Mermaids.

You can't make this shit up. This is the sort of thing that Saitama from One Punch Man would do, but with videogames.

This money will help trans kids in the UK get the help they need.

Even some famous people like [Chelsea Manning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning) and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez) appeared on the stream, to talk to him.

So well done, hbomberguy. I don't know your real name but it doesn't really matter. I doubt you'll ever read this, but this blog post is for you.

You're amazing.
